PACOMIUS, Saint. - I. LIFE. - Founder of cenobitism, born in the Upper Thebaid to pagan parents around 290-92. A soldier at Esneh, he came to know Christians there and resolved to imitate them. Discharged shortly afterward, he headed south, stopping at Senesit to carry out his purpose. Here he took up lodging in a small abandoned temple, called by the ancients the temple of Serapis. Meanwhile he was being instructed in the truths of the faith, receiving, a little later, Baptism; and on the very night afterward he is said to have had a vision that revealed to him his future mission.
He began to lead a retired life of prayer and charity, but soon realizing that in the village he could not lead a solitary life, he resolved to embrace the anchoritic life, placing himself under the direction of a monk famous in those parts, named Palamon. The latter directed a colony of anchorites, to whom he imposed his own manner of life: daily fasting in summer, on alternate days in winter; eating only bread and salt and a few legumes, no oil or wine; doing manual labor, giving its proceeds to the poor; spending half or even the entire night in prayer. P. lived for some years in close association with Palamon and had every opportunity to observe the deficiencies of the anchoritic life not subject to a true rule and to strict obedience to a superior. Thus there matured in P. the conviction that in order to be of help to a greater number of souls it was necessary to introduce the common life, in a monastery, under the direct dependence of a superior.
To carry out his plan he separated from Palamon and went to settle at Tabennisi, an abandoned village situated on the right bank of the Nile. Shortly afterward he began to build a monastery surrounded by an enclosure to receive other monks, but it seems that the first experiments were not encouraging, since he did not succeed in subjecting the first arrivals to the common life. Soon, however, others came disposed to accept the established manner of life, and then still others, so that in a short time the monastery of Tabennisi gathered a hundred monks. This was the moment when P. imposed his Rule and made the distribution of offices and tasks and built a church in the monastery.
When Tabennisi was no longer sufficient for the influx of new recruits, P. founded a new monastery a short distance away at Pebû. Until then the family of P. had grown in a normal way by welcoming individual persons. But now it increased through the accession of entire colonies of ascetics who embraced the new institution, submitting to the obedience of P. and to his Rule. The first was a group of ascetics from Senesit; P. brought there some monks from the first monasteries and organized the life there as in them; there followed another colony living a short distance from the first, but on the opposite bank of the Nile, at Temusson; then a third group of anchorites, living at Theblu under the direction of Petronius. This last acquisition had a particular significance, in that with the gift that Petronius made to the Congregation of all his family's possessions, the material resources of P. were greatly increased. The five monasteries were situated relatively close to one another. Soon others arose farther away: three to the north around Panopolis (Aḥmîm), the first at the request of the local bishop, Arius, the other two, of Schedsinâ and of Tescinê, on the initiative of P.; one to the south, at Phenum.
Setting aside the expansion that occurred afterward, the Congregation counted during the lifetime of P. nine monasteries of men and two of women. And such a succession of foundations was realized in the brief span of about 25 years, between 320 and 346. While this expansion was taking place, P. transferred, for convenience of government, the central seat from Tabennisi to Pebû, where the superior general and the general steward would subsequently reside, and where the general meetings of the Congregation would be held. And it was shortly after one of these meetings, that of Easter 346, that at Pebû the plague broke out and in a short time reaped more than a hundred victims, the most illustrious of whom was P. himself, who died on 9 May 346, after forty days of atrocious suffering and after having designated as his successor Petronius, who however was carried off by the plague two months later. He was succeeded by Orsisius, who, to avert a schism, entrusted the government to the beloved disciple of P., Theodore, withdrawing in the meantime to Senesit, to return to govern alone after the death of Theodore (27 Apr. 368).
II. ORGANIZATION
The Pachomian institution represents a step forward, or rather the logical endpoint toward which the various forms of monastic life as practiced in Egypt in his time tended. From the primitive eremitic form, one had passed to the anchoritic form, with disciples gathering around the most famous hermits, performing some acts in common, yet still living in separate cells and retaining their own freedom of action. It is to P. that credit belongs for having introduced the common life, within a monastery, under the direction of a superior, according to a body of norms regulating the entire life of the monks. It is the form of religious life that subsequently established itself and still prevails in the Church.
1) P. is the first to have written a rule. This is preserved entire in the Latin version that St. Jerome made in 404 from a Greek copy, which in turn derived from the Coptic original, at the request and for the convenience of a group of Latins at Canopus who understood neither Greek nor Coptic. The authenticity of Jerome's translation, in 194 articles, is now confirmed by the discovery of Coptic fragments corresponding fully to the Latin version. Thereby the question concerning the short recension is also resolved: it is merely an extract of the original Rule. Not that P. composed his Rule from the beginning and all at once. Rather, it was completed gradually as circumstances showed the need for new prescriptions. From this Rule and from indications scattered through the Lives of P., the organization of Pachomian cenobitism can be outlined.
2) It is a true religious congregation. At the head of all the monks scattered among the various monasteries stood the superior general, with his seat first at Tabennisi, then at Pbow. The general had the highest authority over all the monasteries, over all the superiors whom he appointed directly, and over all the monks. He maintained the unity of the dispersed family by regularly visiting the various monasteries and by keeping up frequent epistolary exchange with the various superiors. To maintain in all the awareness of being members of one body, twice a year, at Easter and in August, he gathered them all around himself, at Pbow. In this assembly the brothers edified one another and listened to the exhortations of the father, and he regulated the good order of the community, confirmed or changed the superiors of the monasteries and the prepositi of the houses. The first assembly had as its principal purpose the celebration of the Easter feasts; the second, instead, temporal administration - at Pbow there also resided the general steward, who attended to the purchase of the things necessary for all the convents and the sale of the products of the monks' labor - and the re-establishment of fraternal charity through the pardon that the monks granted one another for the wrongs they might have done.
3) The monasteries were surrounded by a wall, within which stood various buildings: the dwelling houses of the monks (each monastery was divided into various "houses," up to forty, each with 20-40 monks, each having his own cell); church, refectory, kitchen, pantry, wardrobe, infirmary, library, various workshops, a meeting place for the entire community. Each monastery had its superior, appointed by the general, assisted by a second. The individual houses of the monastery also had their own prepositus with a second. Every three or four houses formed a tribe. The monks were assigned to one house or another according to the trade they practiced, not, as Palladius attests, according to their different character, and they had their own rank depending on seniority of profession.
The monks' clothing consisted of a sleeveless linen tunic, cinched at the waist by a belt. A tanned goatskin hung from the shoulders to the knees, and over it they had a kind of cowl bearing a hood, on which was the sign of the monastery and of the house to which each belonged.
4) The spiritual life bears the imprint of P.'s concern to make it possible and easy even for beginners, and its characteristic note is moderation. For devotional practices, five assemblies a day were prescribed: in the morning around dawn, at noon, and in the evening before the common meal, before going to rest in the individual houses, with six prayers and some psalms, then around midnight a general assembly. This was generally presided over by the superior and consisted of three parts: psalmody, readings from Holy Scripture, and some prayers. For the celebration of the Eucharist, at first on Saturday they went to the village church and on Sunday the priests of the village came to celebrate in the monastery church; later, when there were priests among the monks, Mass would have been celebrated on both days in their own church. It is not clear whether Mass was celebrated on the other days. Spiritual progress was fostered by thrice-weekly instructions from the superior of the monastery and twice-weekly ones from the prepositi of the houses for their subjects. To this were added frequent spiritual conferences, frequent conversations of the superior with individuals, occasional exhortations, the study of Holy Scripture imposed on all, for which P. required that all learn to read. The same moderation appears in the ascetic exercises: fasting was imposed on all on Wednesday and Friday, while on the other days two meals were provided, frugal indeed, based on bread, vegetables, fruit, cheese, but sufficient and such as to allow the monks to mortify themselves voluntarily in something. P. permitted some special mortifications and even fasts, but such as would not prevent them from attending to their own office, since he kept in view in everything the requirements of the common life.
5) All the monks, beginning with the superior, had to attend to manual labor, which at first consisted in weaving ropes, mats, and baskets from the reeds of the Nile and palm leaves; then in the subsequent development arose all those professions indispensable both for the life of a great organism and for procuring through their proceeds the resources necessary for the maintenance of so many monks. The cultivation of the fields outside the monastery also developed greatly over time, and at harvest time numerous groups of monks dispersed into the surrounding area, offering their labor in exchange for a fixed quantity of produce. For all these works, both inside and outside the monastery, P. laid down precise and wise rules, which, however, were not always observed, especially outside.
6) The Rule further reveals, in many respects, P.'s organizational genius; the spirit of moderation and sound balance that characterizes his entire institution is not contradicted by the minuteness of the prescriptions, by the regulation of all acts to be performed, by the elaboration of a complete penal code; since all this, besides being necessary to establish a community life, corresponded fully to the temperament of the Egyptians of that time.
7) It is difficult to attempt a statistic, even an approximate one, of the Pachomian monks; Cassian and the first Ethiopic recension of P.'s Rule give the monks as around 5,000, Palladius as about 7,000, St. Jerome, instead, in the prologue of the Latin version of the Rule, raises them to more than 50,000, a figure that holds for the end of the 4th century and the beginning of the 5th. In general historians consider this last number greatly exaggerated. If, however, one considers that Pachomian monasticism represented not only an ascetic-spiritual movement but also a true social movement, it should be very close to the truth, while allowing for a considerable increase after P.'s death.
8) All was pure gold of the finest alloy in the Pachomian monasteries miani? The answer differs depending on whether one consults the Greek Lives or the Coptic ones. The former present an exceedingly luminous picture with scarcely a few blemishes and reduce the monks' shortcomings to very little; the latter, on the other hand, while agreeing with the former as to the substance and the figure of the protagonist, report more frequent and more serious infractions of the rules, indeed grave transgressions even in delicate matters. This is the picture that seems best to correspond to reality. Which nevertheless detracts nothing from the very great merit of P.